Monday, May 31, 2010

I have a fondness for Columbia's due to that weird rumor that the modern incarnation was based on Annette Bening. But my favorite is maybe Universal. I love watching the the studio name revolve around the planet. In general I dig studio logos and get a kick out of seeing them shift ever so slightly with changes in visual style and technology over the years.

IFC Films. It may not be as showy as Columbia, Universal or MGM but the lights and the film reel, just impress me more than a logo I'm going to see thousands of times in my life because of the middlebrow tastes of the majority.

I like Pathe's spinning chicken-mobile - I feel like I used to see it a couple of times a month in the late nineties/early 2000s.

Columbia, Tristar, Universal, Paramount - I love all the old-school ones... but not Twentieth Century Fox. Like the Pearl and Dean music, I've had to sit through it one too many times (sticking it on the end of TV shows didn't help).

Focus, Miramax, and IFC are among my favorites, but my #1 has to be the now defunct Paramount Vantage. It was simple and had just the right understated touch of weirdness (the piece of tape/text being moved slightly by an unseen hand).

I've always loved the Walt Disney opening. From the stream with the wee little pirate boat, pulling back to reveal Cinderella's castle through colorful fireworks and the little arch of fairy dusk over it.

Focus Features, because it kinda looks like it's been shot by Christopher Doyle...I like Columbia and Universal as well, and MGM mostly because it makes me think of all the American classics they used to show on TV when I was a kid. Also, because I'm a sucker for Chinese 1930's films, the flickering black and white star of Mingxing always makes me happy :)

@Nick "honestly, I like almost all of them. Because they always mean that a movie is coming."

amen.

I used to really love Tri-Star's with the horse turning into a pegasus but then i got bored with it.

I would actually pee my pants with delight if Columbia's logo woman changed to be a replica of whatever actress was starring that film each time. I would pee my pants. And then stand and cheer and write loveletters to Columbia.

I like the Paramount logo, in part because of "Star Trek" over the years, but also because they were one of the first to go all in on incorporating the logo in the opening frames of the movie. One of the first examples I ever saw was the mountain logo change to an almost-lookalike mountain in South America (?) at the opening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Since then, I have seen Universal do it with their globe logo, most recently in "Serenity". How about it, folks? Anyone remember seeing any earlier examples?

I really like the Disney logo during their Renaissance. The current one is a bit too "Disney World" if that makes sense.

Warner Brothers has a pretty great one too. I like how it goes from the studio lot into the logo. I particularly like how the Harry Potter and the Chris Nolan Batman films interpret them to fit with the tone of the movie.

I think just about everyone loves that 20th Century Fox Intro. That music intro is just iconic.

I hadn't thought about how all the Star Trek films had that Paramount logo, but they totally do.

What I DID think about was how even after seeing it in front of dozens and dozens of other films, I STILL associate the 20th Century Fox logo with Star Wars. The big, booming music of the logo clip feeds so effortlessly into the big, booming John Williams score and scrolling text that to this day, I always expect it to happen, every time I see a Fox movie. Whenever something else follows their logo, it always throws me for a sec.

While the logo itself isn't as iconic as others already mentioned, I do love the way that the Warner Bros. logo is often presented. That tracking of a still photo of a studio in gold, leading to the reveal of the gold logo. But even more than that, I love those few bars of played on the piano mimicking "the world will always welcome lovers" just before the whole orchestra joins in with "As Time Goes By." Nice to see a studio give tribute to one of their very best and most loved films.

Universal. The director's commentary for Hulk with Ang Lee made this funny (albeit somewhat true-looking) observation that he thought the light traveling around the globe starts in Taiwan (where Lee is from) and ends in the United States. Look at the logo again. It's been like that as long as Universal has been around.

Maybe it should be 20th Century Fox as its founder was a Hungarian (and I'm one too), but my champion is Columbia because it belongs to The Remains of the Day. Whenever I see that torch, it reminds me of my heartbreakingly beautiful all-time finalist of dramas; I love it so much! Although I am unable to watch it as many times as my all-time favourite of comedies, for obvious reasons.

As for the other studio logos, I tend to love them all and the explanation has already been provided by NicksFlickPicks. Hope to see Miramax in the future before movies it used to precede!

Like everyone else, I'm obviously a 20th Century Fox fan (who wouldn't be?), but if I can re-direct the conversation for just a moment: more than I've ever liked a studio logo, I adore the mid-period Criterion Collection logo, the one where it was a thin white line moving in from the left and illuminating letters as it underlines them. Simple and classy, and it all but screams "this is the most elegant possible way to watch this very intelligent motion picture you're about to see, even if it's The Rock."

Paramount: arguably the most attractive studio logo ever. I also happened to be very fond of the trend to use digitally altered versions of vintage logs – as was the case for Zodiac, Superbad, Inglourious Basterds, and Indy 4.

Just because they haven't been mentioned, I'm partial to the Strand Releasing smoky logo sequence and Oscilloscope's bizarro space-frequency.

As for least favorite, I still don't get the reasoning behind the name/logo change for Lions Gate/Lionsgate. It used to look distinctive, now it's just bland (especially on DVD spines). And Overture's logo just looks lazy.

I've always been fond of the Miramax design where the name is made up out of the lights of Manhattan, but my fave has always been New Line but ONLY when they include the music. This music. That music just sounds so magical and a little bit mysterious and throw in the film strip and that deep blue lighting... I love it.

Burning Reels, that's a weird choice with MGM. All it makes me think is: Yeah, an unmoving roaring lion. A lion is not quite majestic enough as an image when standing still and, thus, the only other fun would come from seeing how the logo would be manipulated to tie into the film you're about to see. (The WB logo changes are always the best part, because that logo is bland if it's presented plain) Oh, wait, the logo is a roaring lion. Not many ways to manipulate such an image.